Joe Dator’s cartoon is set in a bar, where a couple is sitting across from each other in a booth and having a glass of wine. The woman’s arms are folded across her chest, indicating that she’s offended or annoyed. More importantly, she has a pair of insect antennae. The woman is speaking.
The antennae are distracting, so I thought the man might be staring at them, prompting the woman to say, “My eyes are down here.” That caption, unfortunately, is very close to the winning entry in the last contest featuring a cartoon by Joe Dator:
My final two captions suggest that the woman is at least part-praying mantis:
- “Usually I wait until after sex to bite the man’s head off, but in your case I’ll make an exception.”
- “And what, exactly, is wrong with sexual cannibalism?”
Now let’s see how you did.
There were a lot of praying mantis jokes, but these were the best:
- “First we have sex. Then I kill you.”
- “I could sleep with you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
- “You act like I’m going to bite your head off.”
- “If you’re so good in the sack, why do you still have your head?”
I’d like that fourth caption better if “the sack” were replaced with “bed.”
Here are two very slight variations on my “down here” caption:
- “My eyes are down here, Fred.”
- “My eyes are down here!”
The first loses points for ending with a name, which serves only to bury the punchline. The second loses points for ending with an exclamation point. Yes, the woman looks annoyed, but she’s not shouting.
The best “down here” caption subverts expectations and suggests that women actually want men to stare at their chests: “My breasts are down here.”
In the next two captions, the man has just criticized his date’s antennae, and she’s punching back:
- “Yeah, well you’re going bald.”
- “Maybe you should grow a pair.”
The next four entries recognize that people who use dating sites often omit unflattering information from their profiles:
- “So, I see we both cropped the tops of our profile pictures.”
- “Well, you lied about your height.”
- “You should have said in your profile that you’re going bald.”
- “And your profile didn’t mention you were balding.”
Here’s one more “bald man” joke that highlights the woman’s obliviousness to her own issues: “Shouldn’t you do something about your hair?”
This next entry suggests that the man has just broken up with the woman: “Don’t expect me to just come crawling back to you.”
Here are the week’s best puns:
- “Ok, I’ll bite.”
- “You never talk about my feelers.”
And here’s the best reference to the set-up for Henny Youngman-style jokes about bad restaurant service: “I hope there’s a fly in my soup.”
This entry suggests that, like the old “rabbit ears” on a TV set, the woman’s antennae receive telecommunication signals: “I’ve never needed cable.”
This next entry suggests that the man has asked the woman whether she hopes to someday raise a family: “Kids? Someday. About a thousand or so.”
And these entries note that antennae are used for detection:
- “Never mind how I know you’re lying.”
- “Call it women’s intuition.”
- “Lie.”
I like this next caption, even with the exclamation point, because it came completely out of left field: “You better believe we’re suing him. Your hair plugs didn’t take, and look at mine!”
Finally, here’s an entry that suggests the man has very rigid political views: “I kill after mating and give birth to dozens of larvae at a time, but who I voted for is where you draw the line?”
This week’s winner is, “Never mind how I know you’re lying.”
Lawrence Wood has won The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest a record-setting seven times and been a finalist four other times. He has collaborated with New Yorker cartoonists Peter Kuper, Lila Ash, Felipe Galindo Gomez, and Harry Bliss (until Bliss tossed him aside, as anyone would, to collaborate with Steve Martin). Nine of his collaborations have appeared in The New Yorker, and one is included in The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons.